Latchkey Hero Extended & Deleted Scenes
by Tafferling
Summary: The fall of Harran robbed man of its humanity, and Zofia Sirota of her innocence. Finding redemption, with the city rotting away around her, seems to be a pipe dream at best, until a man falls from the skies and turns futility to hope. Either that, or he's about to make things a whole lot worse.
1. That's what friends do

**Taffer Notes:** This is a dumping ground for my Dying Light Fan Fiction, Latchkey Hero. The scenes (extended, deleted or otherwise) showing up here may or may not turn up eventually during Crane's and Zofia's adventures, and as of such can contain spoilers for the finished product. They are unedited, not fleshed out, so do not expect anything stellar.

The first one I wrote after **Mothers Day: Eviction** , because I am a sucker for scar surveys and I just _had_ to let Zofia take a closer look. Setting is _The Following._

* * *

 **That's what friends do..**

* * *

 **Z** ofia absolutely hated owing people anything. Had always done so, ever since she could remember. She'd hated owing kids at school lunch money whenever she'd forgotten hers. She'd hated being behind on work hours, and she'd definitely hated loans. Those had been the worst. That she'd ever be indebted to the point of having her life put on the scales, that hadn't ever crossed her mind. The thought alone was just downright ridiculous, since that was a thing you saw in the movies and not something you dealt with yourself. Then Harran had happened. Rais had happened. Lena happened.

' _Crane.'_

If there was a ledger somewhere that tallied her dues, then he was the one that claimed most of its pages. His name was stamped all over the place, glaring and obnoxious. Paying him back to get herself out of the red seemed like a very reasonable thing to do.

So what was it with the hesitation? The finger twitching, feet itching, neck pricking and chest squeezing dithering about outside the room?

Zofia glanced at the supplies on the table. Gauze, neatly wrapped and new. Some cotton sponges to go with it, and a tall canteen of water, along with a stubby bottle of antiseptics. Not the sort you used on open wounds, but the sort you washed your hands with in a hospital. The one that'd sting like fuck even if you had the tiniest of scratches. There was even tape. What the hell would she need tape for?

She walked up to the table, pinched the bottom of her shirt forward, and swiped everything over the edge and into the little makeshift pouch. Then she turned around and marched for the door.

Crane was still out cold.

Zofia exhaled through her nose, relieved. So far so good then. He could sleep right on, it'd make things a lot easier. Though it also meant she had to do this on her own, which presented her with a unique challenge: His shirt.

Right. No problem. Doable. Somehow.

She hooked her foot into the door and flipped it shut. It settled into its frame with a soft click, leaving the rest of the house out there, and her in here, in that small upstairs room with its slanted roof and the wide, dirty window right above the unconscious man.

"Okay. So, you're going to have to thank that bloke downstairs when you wake up. His little vixen as well," she told him while she lowered herself to the floor next to him. "They helped carry you here. You're heavy, you know?"

She let the supplies clatter to the floor.

"Way too heavy."

They'd dropped him on a flat mattress, and then the woman had gone scavenging the place for a pillow and a blanket and piled it all by Kyle's head. Then she'd told Zofia that they'd be back soon, and that she shouldn't worry. He would probably be okay, but she should make sure his wounds wouldn't get infected. Then she'd taken off with her friend, a man who stood at least as tall as Crane did, but added an impressive set of shoulders to the whole deal.

Zofia sighed. Why couldn't _he_ have played nurse?

"Let's get you comfortable first," she told the useless Crane.

"Even your head is heavy. How do you manage that?" She gingery slipped a hand under his skull, her fingers threading through his short hair. The tips of her fingers pushed into stiff muscle, and Zofia frowned down at his motionless face. Had he forgotten how relaxing worked? Shouldn't being unconscious get things unraveled a little bit? She squeezed her palms against his skull and gently as she could lifted it to get the pillow underneath.

Zofia had seen him sleep before, more than once. Though admittedly it had always been dark then, with scarcely any light to go around. Up here, with the late evening sun filtering in through the window, he looked deceptively peaceful. His eyes were closed firmly, his lips parted slightly, and while his neck still held residual tension, he'd at least dropped the heavy frown from his brow. No crinkles lined his eyes either, smiling or otherwise.

"Okay. Face first?"

She grabbed the canteen, popped the cap off, and then went for one of the sponges to soak it generously.

"You're _filthy_ ," Zofia proclaimed as she dabbed at the dried _stuff_ on his chin, his cheek, his nose, his forehead— his everything, really. Not a big surprise, considering he'd gone facedown when he'd fallen. She uncovered a few fresh scrapes, tiny cuts that had stopped bleeding a while ago and didn't need any more attention. But she had to be thorough, because he'd be thorough too, wouldn't he?

"You in there, somewhere? Would you mind terribly if you could just wake up? I _really_ don't know what to do."

Nothing. She paused, leaned forward to place her ear by his mouth. A faint, warm puff of air ghosted along her skin.

"No?"

No.

"Fine. Be that way."

The soggy, dirty sponge went over her shoulder.

Zofia slid to the head of the mattress, placed her knees by his shoulders, and tried to get her arms under them. Then she pulled and she pushed and she heaved, until finally she managed to get him to sit up straight, or at least something resembling it.

Keeping one hand curled into the cloth on his back, Zofia tried to balance him as he was, and started hiking the shirt up his torso.

"Why are you so heavy. Stop being so heavy."

Great. She'd turned into a broken record.

She managed to bunch the shirt up against his shoulders, and realised with dismay that his arms were in the way. Of course they'd be. That's how shirts worked. That's how arms worked.

"Oh, screw this."

Zofia leaned her shoulder against his back to keep him from falling over again— acutely aware of all the warmth pressing down on her and the weight pushing back at her —and reached around him to his belt. Her fingers blindly groped for the hilt of the knife he carried. When she found it she spent a few heartbeats working the clasps on the sheath, and then almost dropped it as she pulled it free.

"Sorry for that, but this thing is ruined anyway," she told the unconscious Crane and then she cut through the fabric of his shirt. First she cut it along his neck, then by his arms, until the whole thing fell right off.

By the time she was done her arms were aching, and Zofia thought it was unfair that he got to take a break while she had to be awake. She really needed a nap. Today had been a long enough day already.

But there was no nap to be found, because now she was left with what had been covered by the bloodied, torn shirt.

His back was bad. Old bruises, new bruises. Black, blue and green, and some still angry and red. No blood though, no fresh cuts. She took a good gander at it anyway, a little longer than she probably should have, and by the time her left thumb had started tracing down along the side of his spine, she'd almost forgotten why she was even here. Much like his neck, the corded muscle on his back were stiff as ever. Sore too, probably, from all the pummeling they'd been getting. She could feel them plainly underneath the bruised skin, every firm ridge, and she wondered how much it all hurt. Did it get worse over time? Why had he never stopped and let someone fix him up?

All he'd have to do was ask.

Then again, what did you do for that? Ice bath? There wasn't a lot of ice to go around out here. Still, she could help. She didn't know _how_ , but she could try. That's what friends did, right?

Right.

Zofia sighed wearily, felt her right arm and shoulder growing numb from the strain of holding him up. Yes. That was what friends did. Help.

She'd been an abyssal friend.

Her thoughts rearranged themselves and her eyes flicked to his shoulder. A patch of skin there looked wrong. Broken. Marred. Burn marks? It hadn't healed well, made it look like he'd melted. She let her thumb hike upwards and flicked it over the scarred skin.

"You're not a steak, what were you doing on the grill?"

The truth was likely less amusing. Burning houses. Acid spills. Explosions. Cool explosions? She frowned, her eyes catching on another scar, this one running parallel to his spine.

He'd been lucky there, judging by how well defined the line was. That gash must have been deep, no telling what it would have done if it had connected an inch to the right. Killed him, most like.

"Got into a fight with a Velociraptor, straight out of Jurassic Park. Just couldn't stay out of the tall grass, could you?"

Next she spotted the quarter sized patch of white skin further down, right above the line of his jeans.

"A bullet?" She asked. "Shot in the back, how lame is that? Did you run, or was he a coward? Oh, I know, neighbour's husband caught you while you were scampering out the window, right? Yeah, that's probably exactly what happened.."

Her arm wavered and he fell back, connecting with her chest and leaving her chin sticking over his shoulder while she battled to keep him upright.

"Ooof— Stop that," Zofia muttered, struggling with the weight, and with her heart's sudden decision to break into a full on gallop, not even bothering with a trot first.

Her eyes flicked right.

"Still sleeping?"

His head lolled to the side, knocked into hers.

' _Ouch.'_ He had a thick skull.

"Apparently."

His chin rubbed against hers. The shadow his his beard scratched roughly against her skin. He remained perfectly oblivious to her discomfort, how he tickled her and scraped at her and how he burnt her up from the inside out. No, he just kept on breathing like this was a-okay, his shoulders rising and falling gently with each pull of air. She tried to mind, she really did. She wanted to get annoyed, but instead she just wondered if it was okay to just stay like this and maybe fall asleep herself.

Then her eyes flicked down, and she saw the blood and realised that no, no it wasn't okay. She had a job to do, some debt to repay.

' _Be a friend.'_

So she went to work and lowered him gently back into the pillow.

The drying blood had to come off first. It took her forever to wash it all away, to dab along the gashes and not make things worse. They were bad enough as it was. That he sported a decent amount of coarse hair didn't really help, since she ended up worried she was pinching him unnecessarily. She couldn't use too much water, after all. It'd just soak the bed and that wasn't okay. He'd get catch a cold.

Zofia's brow crinkled when she'd finished phase one of her project, and she allowed herself a moment of staring out the window above him. It'd be dark soon. Maybe an hour and the sun would have vanished. Her stomach turned unpleasantly.

Thinking about night coming while Crane was out cold, worried her more than she'd have liked to admit. She'd gotten too used to him standing at the ready if things went wrong over the last two months. She needed him to tell her what to do, after all. Needed him to make sure she did the right thing if things got bad enough.

Which they wouldn't be tonight, though. Tonight they'd be fine. Perfectly fine. This place was secure. She'd be okay. He'd be okay.

Irritated by her mind trotting off on its own, Zofia turned her attention back to him. She grabbed more cotton sponges, soaked them in disinfectant, and slid closer, trying to get a decent angle on the biggest of the gashes.

It had raked off to the right down his front, a ragged line starting almost dead-centre by his collar bone and extending maybe five inches. That thing would scar, even with her careful cleaning. And if he'd not been out, that process likely would have been terribly painful. As it was he didn't even twitch as she worked her way down, one dab at a time, careful and steady.

Halfway through her eyes cut to the side, over his coarse hair, and his—what was the more professional term again? Pecs? Right? She blinked. Just below the right half of that absurdly well sculpted piece of muscle, sat a jagged white line. It arched off to the side, out of sight. There were three lines, actually, almost in parallel. The last one started just by his second or third rib from the bottom.

"Oh, I know—" Zofia let her lips twitch up in a smile. "You fought a lion. A small lion, and the lion won."

Then she noticed another dime sized one, this one on his left biceps. The smile turned to a frown and while her left hand kept absentmindedly cleaning the wound, her right one went for a hike.

"You get shot a lot?" She gently tapped her finger against the old wound. "Why would you get shot a lot? Or maybe this one's you picking a fight with a unicorn? I always figured unicorns were assholes if they were real."

Zofia bit down on her bottom lip. _'Focus,'_ she told herself, but her thumb traced down his arm anyway, into the hollow of his elbow and all the way down to his wrist. There was a lot of heat under all that skin. Very vivid heat. It was also deceptively soft, stretched taut over muscle and tendons, not rough like you'd expect from just looking at him.

She lifted her hand away, squeezed her eyes shut briefly, and counted to ten. When that was done, she tried herself at finishing the job and to be a better friend.

Every cut she cleaned came with distractions, since he still hadn't fallen in on himself enough to hide his stiff muscles. It didn't really help that there wasn't anything _but_ muscle and bone on him, considering the lack of food and the abundance of physical exertions

All of that combined to paint a pretty effective diversion, and for once Zofia wished she'd have paid more attention in school, or freshened up on her human anatomy at some point... Her knowledge around it was limited to the bare minimum, just enough not to make her look stupid. She couldn't name any of the muscle groups on him, no matter her effort. Though she guessed he'd make for fine study material.

Her fingers certainly thought so, since they trailed off from the wounds and tried to teach themselves biology. They counted his ribs, because why not. They tried to find out if he was ticklish by riding his abdominal muscles, but that was pointless. They found more scars, too. More than she'd liked to count, and more than she could make up stories to.

Eventually the wounds were clean.

"Phase three," Zofia said while she threw the last sponge over her shoulder. She grabbed the gauze next, tore open the package with her teeth, and picked out the first few pads. Again she started with the gash by his collarbone and carefully folded the gauze over it, pressing down and hoping it'd stick without her having to wrap him in tape. It should at least last the night, right?

"Right," she told them both and moved on to the next one. Then the next one, and then one more before she only had the last one to cover. The most inconveniently placed one, which dove just out of reach on his right, on the other side of him.

Zofia glanced up. Still plenty of light left. She'd made good time. Once this was done she could go check on their saviours, if they'd come back by then. And she'd have to find a place to sleep for herself. She threw a look over her shoulder. Maybe right out that door. Like a stupid puppy.

"I'm not going to check your legs, you know." Zofia flicked her eyes to his belt.

"No, Sir. Not going to happen."

It wouldn't be that difficult, come to think of it. Just get the belt open, find buttons, grab pant legs and pull. Get his shoes off first though. Maybe let him keep his socks.

"No," she repeated, grabbed the blanket and threw it over thighs before picking up more gauze.

She had to lean over him, had to brace herself against the wall as she tried to cover the wound.

"And I'm not going to shave you and I'm not going to bathe you or anything like that, so you really ought to consider waking up. Fuck. Stop being so tall and complicated with all your angles and wide chest and all that firm _you_."

She couldn't reach the edge of the wound properly. There was an easy enough fix for that, but even as she repositioned herself and swung one leg up and over him, Zofia froze midway.

"Hell, no—" she said and stopped herself from straddling him, her eyes staring straight down, caught somewhere in the no-mans land between his navel and his belt buckle. No-womans land? She swallowed.

"Hell. No."

There was an impossible warmth hanging between them, and Zofia liked to think she was imagining it. It was the sun heating up the stale air, not him. Couldn't be Crane. Or her. No human produced that much heat. Ever. She exhaled sharply.

The muscles on his abdomen twitched in response.

"Hell no?"

At the sound of his voice, Zofia's heart evacuated up her throat. A warm hand settled against her leg still hovering midair, and tugged it into the general direction of down.

' _Oh boy,'_ she thought as her knee connected with the mattress. _'Oh double boy,'_ she added when she managed to work her eyes upwards and caught a lazy smile on him. Her neck flared. Her ears burnt.

No. Tired. A tired smile. Certainly not heavy and watching her and what-was-he-doing-with-his-hand-where-was-it-going? Zofia slapped his arm down. He puffed out a chuckle, his stomach tensing and his body shifting under her. The movement made her squirm into the opposite direction, but then he propped himself up on his elbows and followed her, reducing the precious bit of free space between them to a whisper of cloth on cloth. Or cloth on warm skin, as things so were. The blanket bunched up too, rode against her backside.

Heat lanced right between her legs, and Zofia did the only thing she could think of: She lifted the gauze, thrust it upwards under his nose and let out a tiny, embarrassing noise that hitched halfway up her throat. He looked at the gauze, then down at the wound she'd not gotten around to fixing, and back at her.

"What? Don't let me stop you. You were doing fine." He looked down his front. "I think."

Did he _have_ to sound so sceptical? And what was that grin for? That was a grin, right? Might have been wince, too.

She frowned at him, made herself believe it was anger stoking embers in her stomach, that it had nothing to do with the hand still lightly resting on her leg. It had slipped down to her knee when she'd knocked her fist into it. Not squeezing or holding, just sitting there, and she really didn't want to be okay with that.

Crane fixed his stare on her, his light brown eyes more alert than anyone was allowed to be after having been knocked out long as he'd been. They wandered her shoulders. Took a gander between them, a little slower and with some glint of embarrassment or expectation or maybe both. Embaration. Eventually they came back up. Friendly. Smiling. And then just a little bit cheeky.

"I—uh—" His eyebrows rocked up into his forehead. "I've got angles?"

"Wha— what? How long have you been awake?"

Crane smirked, lifted a hand to his face and rubbed his stubbly chin. He sat up, and she leaned back, except she really couldn't get far since he'd pulled his legs up behind her. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Caught between a- her head spun. The hand tugged her knee forward, and Zofia was pulled off balance. She slid down into his lap, her hand still lamely holding on to the gauze, and there was that noise again.

She did her bloody best not to look at him, went to stare at his shoulder, since that's what'd she'd gotten so good at, but the shoulder was all square and neat and strong and she remembered how her chin had rested on it a short while ago and how comfortable that had been.

"Hell, no…" she whispered to herself more than him, let herself fall to the right, yanked her leg up over him, and landed in a horribly clumsy roll.

Then she threw the gauze at him, tucked her wildly red face down against her chest, and fled through the door, not once looking back.

A tiny voice screamed at the back of her head, declared this the worst exit ever, and demanded she'd go back there and finish what she'd started. But she didn't know what it was she'd started and where this was going, and she really didn't want to find out.

Being friends with that man was beginning to get difficult.


	2. Suit

**Taffer Notes:** This was a silly drabble I did to accompany a Crane drawing sketch (which I'd show, but this here place doesn't allow me to embed images or links). The most important piece to carry away from it is that it takes place post _The Following_. Seeing a trend yet?

Yeah. Latchkey is gonna hit the Following, and there is nothing stopping me. I just haven't decided yet if Zofia will be there, or if I'll do a Crane solo. Opinions?

* * *

 **THE SUIT**

* * *

 **Z** ofia held on to the idea that the man who stood in front of her had gone and murdered Kyle Crane, even if they looked a little alike. Murdered him in cold blood somewhere, and stashed him away in a closet, and then presented himself to her in that terrible disguise of a suit and a pair of fitting pants. She'd have to go and look for him, she figured. Give him a proper burial. He deserved that much, at least.

She scowled at the impostor.

He'd washed. Properly. He'd done that before, of course, but that never lasted, and it never came with a fresh cut to his hair either. A neat trim had replaced the haphazard landscape of the occasional longer tuft or a patch where the scissor had slipped, with the only irregularly being the scar slicing up from his forehead. A scar which, according to him, he'd received by six different means so far, each more fantastic than the previous one, and Zofia still thought the truth sat somewhere between a door frame and a bit too much drink. After he'd gotten done with his hair, the impostor had moved on to the thick, unruly stubble of his beard, the stubborn one that he'd never quite managed to win out over, no matter how hard he'd tried. Like it put extra effort into growing back the moment he took a razor to it. For now though it looked well behaved enough.

A little too much, she thought, which again brought her back to the point that maybe someone was trying to saddle her with a fake Crane, one that wore subtle cologne, and who'd squeezed himself into a neat suit jacket, pressed and crinkle free. Her nose scrunched up as she took a whiff of the air hanging between them, a hint of a little too much sandalwood replacing the smell of sweat and a struggle for dear life.

"What do you think?" Crane asked her, too busy to look at her though, since the silver cuff links at his wrist demanded all of his attention, needed themselves twisted this way and that between his fingers, as if he didn't quite know what to do with them.

"Guh?" _'You're a social prodigy, Zofia. Impressive.'_

"On a scale of _Get-out_ and _Drop-dead-gorgeous_ , how do I look?"

He tilted his chin up, light brown eyes catching her staring. So what if he'd trimmed that stupid beard of his, it still helped emphasis the flash of his teeth as his lips curled. She hated that particular smile. It was a bit too slow, and a bit too mischievous, and generally too much _Crane._

She'd been wrong. Spectacularly so. Downright shamefully.

He'd dressed himself smartly enough, and done all the things they'd _both_ forgotten on account of survival trumping appearance. Yes- Kyle Crane cleaned up nice, no point denying that, even if she'd have liked to tell him the opposite. But no amount of grooming could ever take the dorky, handsome beast out of him. It lingered on, evident in how he'd messed up his collar, one side nicely folded in, the other half assedly popped. Gentleman on the left. Douche on the right. You also didn't go wearing a low v neck shirt if you wanted to look classy, the teal fabric sitting in a comfortable contrast against all the shadow of coarse hair on tanned skin.

Once again Zofia frowned, this time because his grin wouldn't stop spreading, since obviously he could read her mind- or she'd just gone and said it all out loud. She folded her arms, stuck her chin out, pretended with all she had that she had a say in how much pink he put on her neck and cheeks, but that only made things worse, because now he was positively beaming and convinced he'd gotten it all right.


	3. Hide and Seek

**Taffer Notes:** No spoilers in this one. Just a silly thing spawned from a conversation with a good friend. What to do in the Tower that doesn't involve heroics out the door? That, and I wanted to make use of the iPod Kyle nicked in [Prodigal Son: Room for one].

* * *

 **Hide and Seek**

* * *

 **M** ission status: Idle. Do fuck all. Let the world go spin on its own, because today Kyle Crane had his own priorities. They ended him on the floor of his apartment unit, the curtains thrown back to let the afternoon sun in, and the door closed to keep everyone else out.

A good start. Too bad the iPod he held inches from his nose wasn't complying and cycled him from one mediocre tune to the other. Not inherently _bad_. Quite the contrary, actually. Whoever the thing had belonged to, they'd had good taste, had filled it up with Rock from the 80s and early 90s, just the thing weary mercs needed to get their minds reshuffled.

Still. Some of it shed light on the wrong dusty memories, before he'd figured shit out.

 _Smells Like Teen Spirit_ , for example. Kyle sighed, squinted at the grubby display and grunted "Nope," at it. He'd outgrown Nirvana somewhere between schoolyard bullies, oiled leather seats of his dad's E39, and the whirr of rewinding VHS tapes. Good times, all things considered. Simple and straightforward, with nothing to try and eat him from the ankles up.

He tapped at the iPod.

 _Breakfast At Tiffany's—_ Memory lane took a sharp turn, ended at a whiff of vanilla, rose and lavender, at curly blonde hair, and a skirt that struggled with the definition _mini_. Goodbye innocence. Hello first heartbreak. "Nope." Definite nope. Tina Lee had done enough damage for one lifetime.

"Come _oooon,"_ he whined. _"_ Give me something good. Somethi— " The Rolling Stones came to the rescue, cracking through his earbuds with Mick Jagger lamenting if anyone had seen his baby, and Kyle sprung a grin.

It was a slow one, that grin. No rush to it. No pressure. No one around to please, after all, and no one to convince that _I'm okay, don't worry, I got this_. Just him and Jagger, and a content "Awh yeah," while he closed his eyes and set his foot to tapping out the rhythm against empty air. For the time being the world could go and kindly fuck itself and let him sing, even if he couldn't hold a tone to save his live.

Three verses in and that peace shattered: _"_ Crane _."_

' _No. Not today. No you don't.'_

He didn't let the voice interrupt the enthusiastic drum solo against his knees, or give it a chance at choking out the words, because today he didn't care. Even if he did know he looked ridiculous, with his back flat on the floor and his legs up on the bed.

"Kyle."

' _First name. Shit. What did I do?'_

The air stirred around him. Cheap, bland deodorant. Sunkissed skin. A hint of things you didn't talk about, because you couldn't find the words, even if you were damn sure they sat at the tip of your tongue.

His right earbud plopped out. Setback. Not the end of the world though.

"Anyboody seeen my—"

 _THUMP_ and shuffle and a tiny sigh, cloth dragging across the carpet. Closer… Closer... His neck prickled. His shoulder twitched. A current ran through the air, touch without touch— anticipating contact. It didn't land.

Mission status: Slightly distracted. Still on target though, if a little off course. He smirked, cracked an eye open, and let his voice trail on.

"—Baaabyy."

Zofia sat by his shoulder, her legs folded, and angled herself awkwardly, a lopsided tilt that allowed her to get the earbud she'd swiped up against the side of her head. Mission status: Thoroughly shot past the objective. Recalibrating on a new target..

The proximity came as a surprise, and he decided not to move, even cut out on the singing since that'd probably send her running. Or get him assaulted. Either or. Instead he kept one eye closed, and the other squinting at her as she stared off into her own little world while Jagger sung on for her. So that's how one lured in a Paper Tiger. You baited it with music, and then you kept very still. That way you got a good long look at her exposed neck, the beat of her heart shuddering along it, and the curve of her collarbone. Kyle smirked. She had a little more meat on her now, the Tower treating her better than her lone wolf-cub routine ever had, but he could still see the knobs of bone under her pale skin. Soft skin. Nice and clean because she'd not gone and rolled in dirt for a few hours. Maybe even a day. His fingers twitched and his throat clicked.

Mission status? Heading for absolute disaster. _'Oh shit.'_

A not unpleasant, but potentially fatal (present company considered) tension built against the insides of his jeans. _'Terrible timing, dude. Down.'_

Kyle snapped his eyes open, rolled his legs off the bed, and made a clumsy effort to sit without compromising his dignity, while his mind flew off to cozy up with more recent memories. Warm and soft memories. Tentative touch. Reluctant restraint. Tiny whimpers and a horrible, _horrible_ need to throw himself off a roof because Jesus Fucking H Christ this wasn't fair. The left earbud ripped out during his retreat— _'Ouch' —_ and he caught Zofia looking, brows pinched and lips working themselves together in a thin line.

"There—" She lifted a hand, pointed at the door (' _Blissfully ignorant. Please be observant as a rock today.'_ ). "Is someone out there wanting to talk to you."

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Refocus. Business. With her it was always business, and that might have stung a little, because what was wrong with just coming by to say hi? No, of course not. It was the knock, the one he'd heard and then promptly ignored. Mission priority and all that jazz.

"I have a day off," Kyle told her and pushed himself up against the bedframe. He pulled his legs up— just in case she decided to look at something else than his shoulder for once —and tried to readjust the earbud. Before he got it even halfway sorted, the thing flew from his fingers, neatly yanked out of his grip. The iPod came right along and landed in Zofia's lap.

' _Hey— That's playing dirty.'_

For a moment he contemplated diving for it, though there was a risk involved in that. Mostly because he saw himself not stopping there and flying right past the target. Tuck her in a roll. Tuck her under him. Then maybe roll again and tuck himself under instead, since you had to keep this varied. And that'd be funny (and then some), right up to the point where it wasn't.

' _No diving.'_ Kyle settled for a pout.

"He looks upset," she said, curling her right hand around his favorite toy.

Okay. So this had just turned into a hostage situation. Cruel. Unnecessarily evil. She'd pay for that.

"And he won't tell me what's up because I'm a girl."

Mission status: Confused.

"Excuse me what now?" Kyle looked at the door. A small head poked into his unit and even smaller hands pushed the door open: Sammy. Salma's son. The poor boy who'd lost his father to idiocy and had almost gotten killed in the process, and right now he hovered at the threshold with his eyes wide and lips trembling fiercely, ready to burst into tears. Kyle didn't like the look of it, or where it was headed, since this was _his_ mancave and there was no crying allowed in here.

"Fine," he groaned and ran a systems check.

Everything in order to stand? Barely. Just about. No, scratch that. Still code red, all hands to the battle station, because we've got a situation here Captain, and god damn why'd he have to wear jeans— not like he'd planned to do anything today. Kyle ground his teeth together and stood. With Zofia at his back (and hopefully too busy with his music to watch) he got to work on emergency measures: Tug shirt out of belt. Adjust front of jeans. Adjust it some more. Run another quick check, verify you'd pass a flyby inspection, and then focus on anything _but_.

"What's up, buddy?" Back down on his haunches he went, looking at the quivering mess in front of him. _'Oh sweet Jesus if you start crying—'_

"We were playing. I swear we didn't mean to." He sobbed. One tiny, short lived sob. And then it all spilled out, a mess of broken English and snippets of Arabic, and Kyle barely kept up: "We are just playing and we found this _hole_ (least he thought that's what it meant), so we went through and now I can't find him and I don't know what to do, please Mamma will be mad (that translation probably barely scratched the surface) if she finds out and Mister Crane we didn't mean to I swear—"

A flip switched somewhere in his head. A circuit closed, wired him right back up to where business took priority to play, and his heart sank a little.

"Woah— woah, hold on there. Slow down. Start from the top."

* * *

" **S** houldn't we tell his family? Or Brecken? You know— someone? Maybe even Rahim? He's gotten pretty good with the kids."

"And get the whole Tower panicking?" Kyle glanced at Zofia. Around them the elevator came to a shuddering halt, the light dinging to a stop at number **16** , and the doors swung open to admit them into nomans land. "You know what they'd do?" He had his crowbar ready, the heavy end of it pointed down, and snapped his left arm up to brace it against the doorframe, his way of telling her to not go slipping past and getting herself eaten. "They'd go _Hey Crane, would you mind?_ And I'll mind. I'll fucking mind. But I'll do it anyway."

He cringed. That had come out a little heavy on the bitter end of things, and Kyle looked over his shoulder to find Zofia staring at him. Smiling.

' _Oh yeah. My misery is your joy. I almost forgot.'_

He liked the smile though.

"Come on. Let's get this over with so I can go back to doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing."

Someone had forgotten to check a storage closet on the seventeenth floor after it had been reclaimed, overlooked an air duct just big enough for a boy to fit through, and said boy(s) had promptly embarked on an adventure to uncover great secrets. Only one had come back out. They'd played hide and seek, Sammy had said through sniffles, snot dangling from his nose, and Aslan had been better at it that him and now he couldn't find him and— oh for fucks sake, kids were a lot of work.

Kyle flicked his eyes left and then right, took in the chaos left behind when the apartment building had fallen nearly a year ago, and deemed it clear. Not clean. Clear. Dried blood hinted at the deaths the place had seen, and even with the panorama window across of him missing at least two panes and letting in fresh air, he could still smell the sickly sweet hint of decay.

"Aslan!" he hollered, then banged the crowbar against the inside of the elevator cabin. "Stay where you are, we are going to come find you!"

When the echo of metal striking metal faded, and no gurgling and gargling and shuffling of dead things came inching their way, Kyle hit the first floor button on the elevator and stepped out.

"Left," he said and Zofia followed close behind, quiet as a mouse, like she wasn't even there.

"You didn't have to come with me." Corner. Clear. Tipped over pottery, the soil scattered and shrubberies long dried up. Doors to the right, some open, some closed. One off its hinges, flat in the hall. No movement. No Biters. No kid.

"Could have stayed upstairs. Held hands with Rahim."

She scoffed, a quiet and collected puff of air, and he grinned.

"Or baked me something for when I get back. Do you know when I last had a decent slice of cake? Or even just pancakes?"

"We don't have eggs. Or milk."

"I—I know. Shit. I want eggs. Think the GRE could drop in some chickens? And you'd bake for me, huh?"

Another scoff. Less of an eye roll in it this time, more _Seriously_ and tipping towards _Watch yourself._ "I can't bake."

"So what are you good for then?"

Keeping an eye on the hall, that was what. She stayed out there, right hand on a hatchet, left one with the thumb hooked in a pocket, the glove on it concealing her missing fingers, and waited while he searched the first unit. Empty. Kyle tugged a few drawers open in the kitchen, kicked a wardrobe door aside on his way back out, but found nothing of interest, let alone a little boy.

"What if we don't find him?" She asked after they checked unit number two, but Kyle figured she meant _'What if he's dead?'_

He didn't know the answer to that. So he might as well say nothing. Unit three didn't help with the slice of emptiness that cozied up by his heart after she'd raised the question. There'd been a family in here. Now they were three withered mummies curled up on a wide bed. No one had taken the pistol lying on the mattress. He didn't have the heart for that either.

"You'll give me back my iPod, right?"

"Maybe."

"I told you I'd fight you for it."

Silence. The sort that made him hesitate before he wandered into the fourth unit, and had him turn his head to catch her staring.

"We should split up. Cover more ground."

"You ever watched any horror movies? That never ends well. And I'm not letting you—" he gestures at her hip, at the pocket with his rightfully claimed property in it —"with my baby out of sight."

She didn't listen, not this time. When he returned to the hallway, empty handed once more, Zofia had abandoned her post. An empty spot of stone plated floor greeted him out there, and Kyle's stomach weighted itself down with cold lead.

"Oh for fucks sake.."

There wasn't too much to worry about. He knew that. Any Biter would have started stirring the moment he'd rung their arrival, or at least those still able to, and aside of the occasional creak of wood shifting or the wind pulling through the building, he'd heard nothing.

Creepy silence. Creepy fucking shit god fucking damn it.

Kyle's jaw flexed and he moved on to unit number six. Nothing. "Zofia?" He called on his way out, and kicked at the closed door of unit seven. Once. Twice. No reply. "Aslan?" Third kick. No reply and nothing worked up on the other side either. He inched the door open, crowbar at the ready, fingers flexing around the leather bound makeshift grip.

"When I find you, you're gonna regret the moment you took off, you hear me, baby?"

"Don't call me that. Muppet." _'Ha.'_ Claws out. That had tickled the Paper Tiger.

His eyes flicked left. Next unit over. Okay. Good. And damn those walls were thin.

He pulled a drawer open with the hooked end of the crowbar. "I already did once. You didn't seem to mind."

"You did— what? Why would you? Eew. When? Don't bloody do that again. That's sad and terrible and _you_ are terrible."

"Fine," he said, raised his voice because he'd gotten down on the ground to peer under a somewhat passably clean bed. Where the fucking hell was that kid? "Last time I'm nice to you. Pumpkin."

No little rugrat under here, of course. And none in the bathroom either, just the decaying leftovers of what might have been the tenant hanging from his own shower curtains. Most of him in the tub. Kyle exhaled sharply and closed the door on that image.

" _SHIT!"_ From the other room over. A yelp. Glass breaking. A thud. Not a heavy one, because Zofia wasn't heavy, and Kyle was already in the hallway, heart kicking, mind mapping out things from bad to worst. He'd find her dead. Dead _dead-dead.._

His sprint slowed, mind grinding to a halt and forcing a pause on him at the mouth of the living room in unit nine. A quick scan right, another left. No threat. Nothing moved, until something did, legs kicking in the doorway to the bedroom (same layout everywhere, bathroom right, kitchen right, bedroom(s) left). Familiar legs, with familiar boots, and Kyle reached them with his mouth dry and the crowbar raised for the worst.

"Found him," Zofia wheezed from under a pile of white, long fur. The shaggy bundle hissed and spat and yowled in protest, but she clung on tight.

Kyle lowered the crowbar. Stared. Then he lowered himself along with it, his knees hitting the floor and his eyes running up and down the struggling pair.

Aslan. Of course. Aslan the lion. Aslan the fucking _cat_ , with a red neckband and golden name tag, and an annoyed Zofia currently attached to it.

"Would you mind?" She sneezed.

"Yeh— Yeah? What?"

"Could you take that from me? I'm allergic." Another sneeze, just to make a point.

Poor thing.

Kyle nodded dutifully. Naturally. It's what he was here for, help anyone in need, no matter the sacrifice. Mission status: Back on target, sort of. Adjust parameters to the situation. Doable.

"Hold on." He leaned over her, ready to scoop up the wiggling cat, which looked altogether too heavy and large than any cat had the right to be. Fucking thing probably ate better than some of the people here. "I got this. Lemmi just—" His hand slipped by the cat. Found Zofia's hip. She went rigid on the floor, tightened her arms around Aslan, and shot him a warning glare. Lots of bark. Good amount of bite. But she couldn't let go of Aslan, because cats were a bitch to chase down once free. He knew that. She knew that. So she rolled her head back and called him a _"_ Wanker. _"_ while he fished for his misplaced iPod in her pockets, needing two tries because he couldn't find the right one, and earning himself a stern jab to his side once they were both back on their feet with Aslan purring against his chest.


End file.
